Line 514 Was Sold as Rusting Towers. Loudoun’s Data Center Alley Needs the Power Anyway.

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — Before the Golden-Mars 500-kilovolt project became the latest fight at the State Corporation Commission, another line already defined how Data Center Alley drinks power from the west: Dominion’s Line #514, the Virginia segment of the path that brings energy from the Doubs substation in Maryland down to Goose Creek.

In SCC case PUR-2021-00276, Virginia Electric and Power Company sought approval and certification for a 500 kV Line #514 Partial Rebuild. According to analysis filed with the current data-center transmission fight, PJM’s 2020 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan open window treated the rebuild as an end-of-life structural problem — corroding steel lattice towers — not as a portfolio of named delivery-point violations tied to new campuses. The SCC summary materials in the packet show the case established in November 2021, with a final order in July 2022. Maryland’s companion piece, Public Service Commission Case No. 9669, covered Potomac Edison’s rebuild of about 15.2 miles of the Doubs-to-Goose Creek 500 kV line in Frederick and Montgomery counties; the CPCN order became final on June 27, 2023.

Ghiorzi’s line of attack is that the public was told one story while the physics of Data Center Alley told another. Line #514 has been in service since 1966 as a bulk-power tie between Dominion and Potomac Edison. Completion of the rebuild, Dominion said in the application materials she cites, would support reliable service and future growth — and the company’s ten-year peak-load tables projected the partial rebuild as sufficient for area needs through 2031. Yet the necessity section, on her reading, did not inventory the retail data-center delivery points that now dominate eastern Loudoun’s load growth. Capacity on the corridor has been discussed in terms of roughly doubling capability as structures are replaced, while maps in community materials show a corridor that functions as a western artery into the alley.

In her January 22, 2026 motion to dismiss and accompanying memorandum in PUR-2025-00056, Ghiorzi asked the Commission to do more than rubber-stamp Golden-Mars. She urged the SCC to use its authority to order Dominion, working with high-demand customers, to bring Data Center Alley load below the threshold driving reliability and NERC problems; to stop connecting additional high-demand customers until they can be served reliably; and to finish the Line #514 rebuild before energizing Golden-Mars.

That sequencing argument matters because Loudoun’s Democratic Board of Supervisors kept approving and grandfathering data center square footage even as local generation stayed thin. The packet notes one major gas plant in the county (Panda Stonewall) and little new baseload in Loudoun itself, with data center developers coordinating early with Dominion and with county staff. Transmission, not local generation, became the default answer — and transmission corridors cut across private land.

Maryland’s rebuild of the Doubs-Goose Creek segment and Virginia’s Line #514 docket are not abstract utility housekeeping. Together they form the western hose into the densest data center market on earth. When Democratic majorities on the Loudoun Board treated rezoning and by-right expansion as budget policy — data centers already account for a large share of county revenue in the testimony — they also locked in the need for bigger pipes. Ratepayers across the Dominion footprint, and homeowners under future easements, inherit both the rust narrative and the load reality.

If Golden-Mars is the eastern loop’s last 500 kV stitch, Line #514 is the reminder that the boom was never powered from Loudoun alone. The power was always going to be imported. The only open questions were who would vote the campuses in, who would pay for the wires, and whether “end of life” rebuilds would keep pace with Democratic supervisors’ appetite for more square footage.

Email the Board of Supervisors at:
Phyllis J. Randall (Chair, At-Large) – Phyllis.Randall@loudoun.gov,
Michael R. Turner (Vice Chair, Ashburn District) – Mike.Turner@loudoun.gov,
Juli E. Briskman (Algonkian District) – Juli.Briskman@loudoun.gov,
Sylvia R. Glass (Broad Run District) – Sylvia.Glass@loudoun.gov,
Caleb Kershner (Catoctin District) – caleb.kershner@loudoun.gov,
Matthew F. Letourneau (Dulles District) – Matt.Letourneau@loudoun.gov,
Kristen C. Umstattd (Leesburg District) – Kristen.Umstattd@loudoun.gov,
Laura A. TeKrony (Little River District) – Laura.TeKrony@loudoun.gov,
Koran Saines (Sterling District) – Koran.Saines@loudoun.gov

Email the Loudoun County School Board:
April Chandler, april.chandler@lcps.org,
Anne Donohue, anne.donohue@lcps.org,
Deana Griffiths, deana.griffiths@lcps.org,
Ross Svenson, ross.stevenson@lcps.org,
Kari LaBell, kari.labell@lcps.org,
Jon Pepper, jonathon.pepper@lcps.org,
Lauren Shernoff, lauren.shernoff@lcps.org,
Sumera Rashid, sumera.rashid@lcps.org,
Amy Riccardi, amy.riccardi@lcps.org,